In my very long Wow forum use the subject with the most complaint threads ever in the history of Wow has been LFR. No other issue in Wow has ever generated such a massive amount of forum pages.

Now, at the very least that shows LFR isnt functioning as well as it could be ingame and it needs some fixing/rebalancing. At the very worst its a total disaster.

What that doesnt tell us is that everthings fine and dandy.

It is the most talked about subject. But how many players are complaining vs people enjoying it? What the threads shows is there are people who does not like its implementation. But what is the reason why they do not like? How is it affecting raiders? How is it a total disaster? How is it not functioning correctly?

You raid LFR. You kill an easy boss. You get lowest quality gear.
You raid Normal. You kill a harder boss. You get better quality gear.
You raid Heroic. You kill hardest boss. You get the best quality gear.

What is particularly wrong with this?

If people prefer LFR than Normal or Heroic, that is their choice. If that impacted your raid team, well, sorry then. But making others raid so you can raid is kind of selfish, isn't? Enjoy your game, enjoy your mode of raiding and stop prevent others from raiding at a lower level than you.

It is like a professional sportsman complaining about amateurs playing the same sport because it isn't in the same league as theirs.

I do agree with a lot of what you say but you are wrong about wrath. Not everyone raided in wrath, Raiding while at a larger% than vanilla/tbc and even cata was still lower than the amount of players doing raiding now.

Still you're bang on about Cata changes it made things a lot more difficult for the more casual raiders to get going and in MOP the difficulty in normal mode was still quite high and the only alternative was LFR. If we had flex + FLR during these times I think raiding would be in a real sweet spot.

That is where we differ because LFR isn't raiding to me. What I was trying to show is that given a good level of entry content, tons of people would be raiding if they could but since there is a sever lack of good opening raid content now, LFR reigns supreme. 2.3 million people raided in Wrath(Using ICC), it is obviously an estimate due to the limitations that WoW Progress had back then. So some of those are double people and some people aren't counted because it only counted guilds and not actual players raiding in said guild. So I would assume those numbers balance out around where it's guessed at.

And I guess that's really my point, given the right real raid balancing, LFR isn't needed. The only reason LFR has a niche is because Blizzard isn't doing good things in the raid balancing department.

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Originally Posted by Deficineiron

Folded, or were forced to fold too quickly, because, in essence, the lvl 85 content tuning was teh only game aspect which blizzard was willing to reverse course on. Also, given how LFD worked, I am not sure why they thought they could put challenging, brain-on content into such a sausage grinder system.

10/25 lockouts could have been reversed and weren't. other changes would have been harder or impossible to change - linear 'no-choices' questing, for example. I think there were many things which collectively managed to annoyed a fairly broad cross-section of the playerbase.

Blizzard over reacted to 300k people leaving in a quarter since it was their first quarter losing people and that's what I was getting at. While, at the time, 300k seemed like a lot. If we had a 300k loss now, people would say things are going great. That is what I was getting at. They should have stuck it out at the time, taken the mil or two loss and stabilized with an overall better game(in my eyes) and kept more subs overall. I think we'd be in a much better place now and would have the massive sub bleeding we currently have because of all the decisions they started to make in Cata+.

Blizzard over reacted to 300k people leaving in a quarter since it was their first quarter losing people and that's what I was getting at. While, at the time, 300k seemed like a lot. If we had a 300k loss now, people would say things are going great. That is what I was getting at. They should have stuck it out at the time, taken the mil or two loss and stabilized with an overall better game(in my eyes) and kept more subs overall. I think we'd be in a much better place now and would have the massive sub bleeding we currently have because of all the decisions they started to make in Cata+.

it may have been their worst loss-from-peak ever (the q1 2009 peak of 12m commented on by vivendi ceo/a/b chairman would imply they had similar drop after wotlk's firswt few months), but something sure spooked them. they had already gone and made 90% of the game almost insultingly easy, hard to die, etc (leveling, both outdoors and dungeons, etc), but I bet their completion stats on LFD heroics at 85 was just atrocious - how could it be otherwise? Now I don't think necessarily that the aggregate losses were even 50% due to the issues with lfd at 85, but it WAS the only thing they chose to quickly address.

As others and myself have mentioned, the 10/25 lockout decision was, in my opinion, at least as harmful.

The reasons you're running it are why you like having the feature. It's like if your local coffee shop offered free donuts, and you were complaining because you were getting fat and hating yourself because of all the free donuts you don't even like that much. Obviously, part of you does like the LFR system, even if it's just the rewards you're doing it for.

I really don't have any patience for the "I hate this stuff but I keep playing it every day/week anyway" argument. That's either peculiarly masochistic, or you're not being totally honest about your motivations.

means to an end, just because you like the end doesn't mean you enjoy the means.

means to an end, just because you like the end doesn't mean you enjoy the means.

In the case of MMORPG design, they're the same. You like the rewards from LFR, ergo you like the existence of the LFR system. You might prefer something else, but LFR is clearly satisfying some of your needs, or you wouldn't be running it in the first place. Plenty of people don't, you know.

It's not just heroics. They introduced coins that give bonus loot rolls and those are only available once per day as well. Besides, how do you figure doing seven heroics in one sitting is less effort than doing one a day? As far as I know there is no short-term buff that shortens the time it takes to do your next heroic. In both cases the process is the same: queue, wait, and do the run. Very few people in pugs are looking to chain heroics, and the odds of finding someone in your guild who is willing to chain heroics with you are about the same as finding someone to do one a day with you. I don't see a significant time advantage either way.

Nothing to do with a buff, just real life commitments. People find it easier to find a couple of hours on one day to get it all done than it is to find half an hour every day. Pretty much exactly why people are complaining they can't sit down and do that.

... To say that there aren't players now but there were 5 years ago is just plain dumb.

As a designer, if I were losing tons of players daily, I would look at the complaints and see why some people are leaving. People who say things are good and such aren't the ones leaving, thus their opinions, for the time, aren't overly important if you are trying to stop the bleeding. Personally, I'd toss up a ton of polls and such to try to find the reasons for people to stop playing. Toss them in the ingame mail system and give a pet or mount for completing the survey or some free game time, or something everyone actually wants to make sure it gets done by most people.

It just doesn't seem like they are trying anything. I guess that is what upsets me most. They aren't even acting like they have a problem. .....

Been out of touch a bit with this thread..whoops..20 pages later...

Well then...as a designer... And you really think they don't try. Well then , the entire population of new and disgruntled gamers are up for grabs. Seems it only needs a huge franchise like..lets say Star Wars or Lord of the Rings and an experienced studio like Bioware to listen and snap them up. Blast everyone out of the water.

Whoops..didn't happen. Now I wonder...you make it seem like it is so easy. Endless supply of gamers. Do your research, Listen to the people. The forums are there. The people are vocal.

Now..somehow it isn't so easy it seems. I guess..."as a designer" you could get rich by selling your masterplan?

Originally Posted by brunnor

Blizzard over reacted to 300k people leaving in a quarter since it was their first quarter losing people ...

So on page 9 you say they aren't trying and on page 33 they are overreacting.

Ooookay...everybody is clever nowadays, especially the ones who watch from the outside, without data and without their head on the line when it is about making decision.

Guys..if you know so much..answer me this: Why cannot high paid designers and programmers find all that out that you on this forum know by sitting in your cubicle?

Last edited by det; 2013-07-18 at 10:27 PM.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

... there are lots of different types of players, with different amounts of time to play, and different tastes for the content and difficulty and time commitment they want to give to any of those pieces of content. The person that plays for an hour or so a few times a week is playing the same game as the person that plays five hours every night.....

Nothing to do with a buff, just real life commitments. People find it easier to find a couple of hours on one day to get it all done than it is to find half an hour every day. Pretty much exactly why people are complaining they can't sit down and do that.

We're going in circles here. That was the point I was making to begin with. This change really put people with real-life weekday commitments at a disadvantage. I don't even know why we're arguing about this. We seem to be in agreement.

Well then...as a designer... And you really think they don't try. Well then , the entire population of new and disgruntled gamers are up for grabs. Seems it only needs a huge franchise like..lets say Star Wars or Lord of the Rings and an experienced studio like Bioware to listen and snap them up. Blast everyone out of the water.

Whoops..didn't happen. Now I wonder...you make it seem like it is so easy. Endless supply of gamers. Do your research, Listen to the people. The forums are there. The people are vocal.

Now..somehow it isn't so easy it seems. I guess..."as a designer" you could get rich by selling your masterplan?

So on page 9 you say they aren't trying and on page 33 they are overreacting.

Ooookay...everybody is clever nowadays, especially the ones who watch from the outside, without data and without their head on the line when it is about making decision.

Guys..if you know so much..answer me this: Why cannot high paid designers and programmers find all that out that you on this forum know by sitting in your cubicle?

First, who the hell would work in a cubicle? God that type of work would be terrible. The true answer I think to why devs can't do it is arrogance. The former Blizzard person AMA that was up a month or so ago pretty much said that. The devs are huge dicks and have HUGE egos and think their shit doesn't stink. They think they know best no matter what others would tell them, even their own employees. So you expect them to actually give two shits what me or anyone else on the forums thinks even if it is the most amazing idea ever?

I never said it was an easy job. It is a hard job but they get paid out the ass to do it. So I kind of expect them to get things done.

I said they did overreact at Cata release to the sub loss. They currently aren't trying very hard to fix it. I'd be more than willing to help them out should they ask me, but they won't due to the whole arrogance thing as mentioned already. There is zero way that no one has said "Hey, we did really good in subs for Wrath/TBC, why not make things more like that?" at Blizzard. Why they refuse to do things anywhere close to that, I assume goes back to previous reasoning.

I personally think that you could pick any 10 people randomly on these forums and have them get together and design a better quality of game than we have now overall. Would it fix subs? Probably not but the game would be better for the group that does stay. In the end, I'm just tired of their mild ground crap on everything. I want them to pick a damn side and say "THIS IS WHAT WE ARE DOING NOW AND FOREVER!". If WoW is never going to go the direction I want it to go, then I can move on, not that big of deal to me.

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Originally Posted by Deficineiron

As others and myself have mentioned, the 10/25 lockout decision was, in my opinion, at least as harmful.

I agree with that as well, but getting me in to 10/25 man argument is almost as bad as LFR, so best not to get me started there.

As others and myself have mentioned, the 10/25 lockout decision was, in my opinion, at least as harmful.

Yup.

LFR has definately harmed the game in my opinion, but I don't expect them to ever remove LFR again, -but- that doesn't mean we can't point it out as a mistake.

They could've simply kept their mainstream gamers satisfied the way they did it during WotLK and that was by leaving 10m as easy versions of the 25m content up to the point that people were happy to pug it, and the 25m raiders could join along whenever they felt like it. Changing this and later, to fix it, moving the game closer to a lobby system was a very bad decision.

Or well, LFR was rather added because they had to fix other mistakes they had made. The subscriber loss in cataclysm, I'm not so sure it had as much to do with heroics being too hard, rather than there being no end-game for the mainstream playerbase who didn't want to commit to a raidshedule to see the raidcontent. (Which wasn't an issue during WotLK thanks to easy 10m versions of everything).

Last edited by True Anarch; 2013-07-19 at 02:40 AM.

Misbehave, Misbehave, Misbehave. Misbehave because you are not a puppet or a robot, but a human being that can experience the world from different perspectives. "But misbehaving is the first sin! When we are children we are told so! Even in the Bible we got cast out of Eden because Eve misbehaved!"
Cogs, robots and machines aren't allowed to misbehave. Are you trying to become a machine then?

As others and myself have mentioned, the 10/25 lockout decision was, in my opinion, at least as harmful.

The 10/25 lockout decision was specifically directed at hardcore complaints.

Hardcore raiders don't run PuGs with their extra lockout. They do more hardcore farming for their progression characters. They don't do it in PuGs because "bads" complain when their loot gets ninjaed by people who "deserve it" more.

Hardcores wanted less "required" grinding and any opportunity to grind the tiniest bit of gear is "required" in that mindset. So, Blizzard caved to them, and now there is one lockout for 10-25. It really doesn't matter to anyone though.

The lockout change didn't hurt anyone or anything, at least not in the way that many people choose to believe.

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Originally Posted by brunnor

First, who the hell would work in a cubicle? God that type of work would be terrible. The true answer I think to why devs can't do it is arrogance. The former Blizzard person AMA that was up a month or so ago pretty much said that. The devs are huge dicks and have HUGE egos and think their shit doesn't stink. They think they know best no matter what others would tell them, even their own employees. So you expect them to actually give two shits what me or anyone else on the forums thinks even if it is the most amazing idea ever?

Complete truth and deep wisdom is always obtained from reading AMAs started by anonymous low-level, low-ability former/fired employees who are angry at management for disciplinary reasons that they aren't disclosing in the AMA.

Hardcores wanted less "required" grinding and any opportunity to grind the tiniest bit of gear is "required" in that mindset. So, Blizzard caved to them, and now there is one lockout for 10-25. It really doesn't matter to anyone though.

The lockout change didn't hurt anyone or anything, at least not in the way that many people choose to believe.

The lockout hurt the casual playerbase, who used 10m raiding back then pretty much as what LFR is for now.

Then they added LFR again, and the hardcore raiders are back to square one, because now they've to farm LFR together with their usual 25m or 10m raid to remain as competitive as possible.

What exactly have we gained after this short journey of mistakes? The same complaint LFD tends to get, less of a 'world' of warcraft and more of a lobbying system unconnected to community or realm of your character.

Misbehave, Misbehave, Misbehave. Misbehave because you are not a puppet or a robot, but a human being that can experience the world from different perspectives. "But misbehaving is the first sin! When we are children we are told so! Even in the Bible we got cast out of Eden because Eve misbehaved!"
Cogs, robots and machines aren't allowed to misbehave. Are you trying to become a machine then?

Well then...as a designer... And you really think they don't try. Well then , the entire population of new and disgruntled gamers are up for grabs. Seems it only needs a huge franchise like..lets say Star Wars or Lord of the Rings and an experienced studio like Bioware to listen and snap them up. Blast everyone out of the water.

Whoops..didn't happen. Now I wonder...you make it seem like it is so easy. Endless supply of gamers. Do your research, Listen to the people. The forums are there. The people are vocal.

Now..somehow it isn't so easy it seems. I guess..."as a designer" you could get rich by selling your masterplan?

Good game design is not some talent that a select few folks are simply ejected from the womb with. There are lots of excellent ideas posted throughout these and other MMO forums, by players who have been around all sorts of games for a very long time. The people that started this game WERE EQ players who said "lets do something different", and it's likely that their ideas, if discussed on forums, would have gotten the same old "oh , everyone's a game designer now" schtick.

Benevolence is a luxury for the strong - Wrathion
Plox. I got your plox right fucking here. - Animalhouse
I still prefer seeing Thrall rather than blood in my urine, that doesnt make him a good character. - Verdugo

Didn't they do both when Cataclysm launched? Make 25m and 10m share a lockout and start making 10m the same difficulty as 25m?

Misbehave, Misbehave, Misbehave. Misbehave because you are not a puppet or a robot, but a human being that can experience the world from different perspectives. "But misbehaving is the first sin! When we are children we are told so! Even in the Bible we got cast out of Eden because Eve misbehaved!"
Cogs, robots and machines aren't allowed to misbehave. Are you trying to become a machine then?

Complete truth and deep wisdom is always obtained from reading AMAs started by anonymous low-level, low-ability former/fired employees who are angry at management for disciplinary reasons that they aren't disclosing in the AMA.

Yes because you know better! I'd trust someone who worked for a place over some random on the forums who doesn't know shit about the inner workings of the company. Even a janitor can know if the bosses are dicks and full of themselves, doesn't take much to know who you work for and what kind of people they are.

I had one corporate job in my life and I knew my bosses were dicks long before I quit. A few of them were cool and nice, but the head two were dicks and I only talked to them when they hired me.

You can try to hide behind possibility and such all you want to make your point but in the end they are far more credible than you ever will be on anything to do with Blizzard.

Yes because you know better! I'd trust someone who worked for a place over some random on the forums who doesn't know shit about the inner workings of the company. Even a janitor can know if the bosses are dicks and full of themselves, doesn't take much to know who you work for and what kind of people they are.

We don't know that the AMA guy even worked for Blizzard.

I am hesitant to dis QA guys because there are 1-3% of them that aren't complete idiots, but then again, 97-99% of them are complete idiots. And many of them are pissed off at the universe for giving them QA jobs (due to their lack of skill/talent/education/motivation) instead of development jobs.